It’s all over every blog, book or theory on building a business of any kind; “Don’t waste your energy trying to do it all, but point your energy and time on one narrowed down specailised area and this will lead to success.” Find a niche- specialise and you will be successful in business.

Try as I might a 'niche' eludes me. I can’t seem to set my sights on just one tree when there is an amazing forest before my eyes. I find people, their lives, their minds, their relationships, their bodies, their environment, their everything is interconnected.

How can I point my energy in one spot when there is so much consider about human life? I think people who can concentrate on one area are amazing. I envy their focus and commitment, but I have failed business 101.

Maybe it is because I enjoy variety. Maybe it is because I lack the ability to screen out all the other factors and possibilities, but I love seeing all sorts of people with all sorts of issues. It will certainly have a lot to do with the holistic way in which I was trained and the increasing evidence that we are greater than the sum of our parts. I see individuals and couples that come in with all manner of conflicts and complaints. I can see couples dealing with child behaviour problems, or parents dealing with coupling after becoming parents. I see old couples married for decades and young couples contemplating a life together.

I see people with major life or career decisions and we focus on the future they want to create. I see people needing psychotherapy, blocked by past trauma or needs that were never met.

A variety of problems simply means I have to dip into a range of learning and keep learning and learning. For example I can use an understanding infant attachment to identify patterns in adult relationships. I keep up on neuroscience, discoveries in genetics and little known biochemical disorders that affect us emotionally. I understand how the personality is formed and the many strategies we develop to deal with our imperfect world. And one thing that really excites me is being able to pull a bit from here and connect it to there or at least create a little ah-ha.

I want to help people understand how their strategies can become habitual and block their natural urge to grow and develop. Other times I am simply the ears that hear the real story, one that has never been told, until now.I know what one needs to become more integrated and regain the parts of self that were lost along they. I enjoy facilitating development, personal development, family development, organisational development. I love to teach, to share what I know and help individuals or audiences learn there can be another way to see things and act or be.

I am driven by a desire to help, I want to make the world a better place. I have learnt of so much that is needed to help others along their journey. Yet I find I am able to tolerate the ambiguity that many clients express while they explore where it is they want to go. I am impressed that as I let go of my urge to find solutions my client organically takes over finding resources, directions or answers they were previously unaware of.

So no, I am not an expert on any one aspect of our amazing minds and the complex lives that we live. And in some ways I wish I could have succeeded in specialising. I would love to be that person who knows everything about something. But in other ways I relish the variety of the human condition and its many different faces. Maybe this is a business mistake, and one day I’ll blog about the woes of neglecting to specialise But it's not all about business success. Yes, I want to be successful, but successful in my vocation of helping and teaching with passion, commitment, clarity and authenticity.

Perhaps my ‘niche’ is life itself: our humanity, with its complexities, its challenges and its triumphs. So, if I have failed in taking the advice of all the ‘how to succeed in business’, I am at peace with that.